


Beloved Pet

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Children, Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 02:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16359239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Tabitha knows that the pale, thin woman isn't her mother, that before she came from some place else, a real home, a real family.





	Beloved Pet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gwenfrankenstien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenfrankenstien/gifts).



“Sweet little child, like a flower, or a butterfly,” her mother crooned to her.

Except Tabitha knew that the thin, twig-like woman wasn’t her real mother. She only had the vaguest memories of her real home and real mother, a snatch of song, the smell of freshly baked bread, kind words and a warm hug.

Her false mother was kind in her own distracted way, long brittle fingers would weave her flower crowns to wear in her hair, feed her sweet, airy bread that left her hungry, sing her buzzing, lilting songs about short lived things.

Short lived things like her.

Her real mother had told her about her grandmother, or maybe she imagined that her real mother had told her stories.

The grandmother, real or imagined, had named the cows and the farm cats and even a few favorite chickens and maybe even a three-legged dog. She thought that there was a story about a lame dog at least, even if she couldn’t remember the story itself.

The mother she had now kept portraits of all her siblings, children that she’d never met.

By the time she’d arrived they were all dead.

Long dead.

Sometimes her mother talked about finding her a sibling, if she wanted one. A little brother sister for her to play with.

But in the very next breath she’d suggest a rabbit or a kitten, as though a brother or sister was the same thing as a pet.

To her mother they might have been.

There was the thing that her mother had introduced to Tabitha as being her uncle.

The uncle was hulking, hairy thing that walked on four legs and leered at her with a mouthful of fangs. He introduced himself as either Wolf or Woof, she couldn’t tell because he said it as a loud bark and laughed when she screamed and ran away.

Her mother had laughed as well, something Tabitha was sure her real mother would never do.

Uncle Woof or Wolf came by to visit regularly and when he came by she made a point of hiding.

Her favorite place to hide was up in the trees, where the wasps, with their jeweled wings and red eyes would jeer at her. Until she learned the trick of singing to them, they’d torment her, jabbing at her with their golden spears. They still tormented her when she sang to them, but they didn’t attack her.

The reason she liked hiding in the trees was because the wasps told her what she already knew, that she’d been stolen away, that the mother she had now wasn’t her real mother and that she was nothing more than a pet.

It was painful to hear, but that was part of the reason she liked it. Hearing what she knew helped. It made those faint memories more real.

It gave her the courage for what she knew she’d have to do eventually.

She’d outgrown some of her usual hiding spots, she was almost as tall as her mother, the false mother, something that woman frequently complained about, and Uncle Woof’s teasing about her being ‘a delicious little thing’ had more menace behind it than there’d been before.

Mother kept portraits of all the previous children and none of them were any older than she was. Most of them were much younger.

Her mother cried over the children she had kept as pets, but the grandmother from her real mother’s stories had supposedly cried for a favorite cow.

Unless she wanted to find out what happened to the other children she was going to have to leave.

Where she’d go she had no clue, but the wasps offered mocking suggestions.

Into the mountains where she might get eaten by trolls, into the swamp where she might drown, into the forest where she might be lost forever.

But if she didn’t get eaten or drowned or lost she might find her way back to a little house on the edge of a great forest where a woman in a flour dusted apron waited for her to return.

**Author's Note:**

> Fae are creepy, not a typical Halloween monster and all them ore fun for it.


End file.
